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Is this a common practice?

I was looking at equipment on ebay and I downloaded an operators manual and I came across the following paragraph.

INSURANCE
At all times you will have and maintain insurance in such
quantities and types, and with coverage sufficient and
appropriate to defend and to hold (name of manufacturer here) harmless in
the event of any cause of action arising from the use of the
Products.

I know the world is becoming a very litigious place but this is the first time I've seen a requirement for the end user to carry sufficient insurance to protect the manufacturer from liability. Somebody must have let the legal department play in the owner's manual file.

The equipment is a plasma cutter. The manual and the equipment it is for is from the late 1990's. I am not intimately familiar with the chronology of the development of plasma cutters into the main stream marketplace and as I operate on dial-up out here in the sticks it is time consuming for me to look up many manuals to determine if this is common practice or just something legal slipped in at that time. Also to highjack my own thread, at the time, 1999, by reading the manual(I don't have a plasma cutter) it appears that they were considered quite dangerous, I would say much more so than a welder. Is this still true or has the technology evolved to make the newer units safer to use?
The paragraph was on the page with the warranty information and I am curious to know if those who are equipped with plasma machines have ever noticed this or anything similar when they studied their owners manuals from front to back, which we all do when we get a new toy?
Not an import and not Miller but still a respectable name in plasma cutting from what I've read. It may well have been an over zealous legal department at the time but if you have plasma equipment from that era or later for that matter you might want to get out your owner's manual to see if you need to bump up that insurance. That said, I'm not a lawyer but I do wonder how legally binding something like that might be. I'm sure it would depend on the jurisdiction. Maybe they hired on 1 of those lawyers that writes the user agreements for software. Guess that's why we are supposed to read all the fine print and all the manual.

A manufacturer can't force you to carry insurance unless you enter into a contract with them.

Only the government can force you to buy (Obamacare) insurance.

Or so it claims.

Helios,
I agree with you sort of, in so far as a manufacturer should not be able to force you to buy insurance to protect them. But two issues arise from this. One is that the manufacturer can refuse to supply you with equipment if you refuse their terms and the second issue is what is deemed a contractual agreement. This second issue seems to vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and if you've ever read the fine print in a contract most significant ones specify what jurisdiction's law governs the contract. I'd be willing to bet that since the author of the contract usually chooses the jurisdiction that that choice is in their favour rather than yours.
We purchased a skid steer loader many years ago and in order to get the dealer to unload it I had to sign a document in which I acknowledged that I had read and understood the entire owner's manual and further had examined the machine to verify that all the safety labels described in the manual were in place and fully legible. I have yet to actually do that but I signed the paper cause I wanted(needed) my skid steer. Question is if a paragraph similar to the one in my first post was in that manual have I subjected myself to a contractual agreement to provide insurance? I don't think it should stand up in court but I've seen many settlements in the news that I thought were ludicrous but they stand just the same. I am not a lawyer but even if I was could I be expected to understand the fine points of corporate law in a jurisdiction possibly very far from my own and perhaps in another country? I don't think it is reasonable for a manufacturer to expect this but nevertheless I suspect that it could stand up in some jurisdiction somewhere. Hopefully no one ever has to test the hypothesis.
Meltedmetal

ps. I'm not opening any political cans of worms today(Obamacare) but thanks to you and all the others who replied. Meltedmetal